Giles featured in San Francisco Chronicle
“The literary magazine Zyzzyva’s Friday night 30th anniversary party, in a law office on the 28th floor of 2 Embarcadero Center, was attended by a crowd of connoisseurs/aficionados of stories, verse, books and words. They gobbled up the view, the readings, the hors d’oeuvres and the literary silent auction packages, as well as the music of Litquake co-founder Jack Boulware’s Delco blues band.
Emcee was Michael Krasny, who seems to have read every book ever published; and greetings were made by Zyzzyva Editor Laura Cogan and Managing Editor Oscar Villalon. Novelist/short-story writer Molly Giles, first up on the program, recalled having a story accepted in 1986. Shortly thereafter, she said, she invited then-editor Howard Junker to speak to her writing class at San Francisco State. “He tore students’ stories apart like a happy puppy,” she said, and then told her students that he slapped rejection notices on manuscripts before he started to read them. This was the perfect story to raise the spirits of most every writer in the room.”